The whole controversy is that Blizzard has lumped more than one type of player into the same category. They truly are apples and oranges and Blizzard is counting them as though they are the same thing where they are not.

Different type of players? As far as I know they are all playing the same freaking game.

It's only a controversy because you want it to be one.
There, I said it. People are whining and complaining because they're probably have been bashing WoW for the last 6 months and can't accept that:
1) It sold almost 3 million copies in a week.
2) It actually grew to 10 million.

So instead of enjoying their own game, they have to spam the forum to bitterly disprove that they have 10 million customers.
The ways they do it are pathetic, people have even gone as far as calling Chinese players not real players because we don't encounter them in-game.

Different type of players? As far as I know they are all playing the same freaking game.

Look at my carnival analogy as it may help you emotionally disconnect from WoW. Yes both types of carnival goers get to enjoy the same rides and activities, but the product being sold is ACCESS to those attractions (tickets and wristbands) not the attractions themselves. The products are vastly different in many regards and should not be lumped together. And more to the point if you insist on lumping them together, the combined sales shouldn't be called wristband sales.

Different type of players? As far as I know they are all playing the same freaking game.

It's only a controversy because you want it to be one.
There, I said it. People are whining and complaining because they're probably have been bashing WoW for the last 6 months and can't accept that:
1) It sold almost 3 million copies in a week.
2) It actually grew to 10 million.

So instead of enjoying their own game, they have to spam the forum to bitterly disprove that they have 10 million customers.
The ways they do it are pathetic, people have even gone as far as calling Chinese players not real players because we don't encounter them in-game.

this is a forum. a discussion forum. for discussions. if discussions upset you that much, i suggest you leave.

people are genuinely interested in what that 10 million actually means. and what it means in relation to the 2.7 million first week sales. the correlation between the two does raise a question or two in my mind. it isnt trying to "bitterly disprove they have 10 million customers" to raise those questions. more a case of trying to understand how that 10 million breaks down.

When challenging a Kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

Over the last 10 years, Blizzard has taken over $10bn from MMO players. Take a look around your game...do you see $10bn worth of content available to you? Do you see even a tiny fraction of that in relevant content? Now ask me again why I dislike what Blizzard has done to the MMO industry.

Edit: But honestly, arguing that Chinese subs shouldn't be included is stupid. Yes, they don't pay as much and they don't buy expansions, but they're still subs. It's just smart marketing to announce them all together. Bigger numbers will fool the people who don't care enough to really look.

The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.
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That's how they inflate. They don't openly lie just misrepresent their "sub numbers"

Misrepresenting your numbers is still fraud and against the law. The technical name for fraud typically falls under the term 'Misleading the Shareholders' and any form of that, whether it's through lying about your income directly, or indirectly through falsely inflating subscription numbers or obscuring useful investment information, is highly illegal.

Originally Posted by Zeek Daniels

World of Warcraftsubscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards.

So they dont say anything about ppl with multiple accounts or more than one active pre paid card. Or game room players with multiple accounts. Its still inflating.

and my point about the chinese isnt how much they are paying its how its counted. They pay per hour or w.e but they only have to access it once to becounted as a full sub. A sub in my book is a person who is paying for a full month, not a person who only wants to play for a few hours each month because thats all they can afford yet blizz makes it look like they have access the entire month when they dont.

If you have multiple accounts you're still paying Blizzard. Whether you pay $45 a month or $15, it doesn't matter, Blizzard is going to count each sub as a separate subscription, as well they should. Let's say your name is David Grant. I bet there's fifty David Grants who play or have played WoW in the past. How are they going to know it's you or another David Grant who bought this new account? You'll say something like "well they should cross reference credit card and address information." That would be ludicrous to expect a company to do that. If you go to McDonald's and buy a hamburger, and then come back that night and buy chicken nuggets, they don't care that you're the same person. You still bought two separate items and paid for each individually.

The problem is that you're reading way too much into the active subscription numbers. You're applying some sort of false meaning to them, implying they should be thoroughly and 100% accurate. In regards to the way Blizzard does it, that's all you can reasonably expect from a company. You can't seriously expect them to hunt down credit card and account info for every account to figure out whether it's a duplicate, since they would have millions of accounts to comb through.

As for Chinese players, the way they play the game is different than us, but they still count as players. Whether they played 4 hours or 60 this month, they qualify exactly the same as someone who paid for their account, played once and moved on.

Originally Posted by Zdrasti

The whole controversy is that Blizzard has lumped more than one type of player into the same category. They truly are apples and oranges and Blizzard is counting them as though they are the same thing where they are not.[COLOR="red"]

There are not different types of players, and that's the problem you're making here. Blizzard licenses out World of Warcraft through NetEase in China, so I highly doubt they have their hands on the exact specifics of how long a certain player plays, and how much NetEase makes off each players. Besides you would have to then set brackets: "We make X off of Y players playing Z amount of hours." That's way too complicated and in-depth, and is unnecessary for any individuals to make a sound financial decision on Blizzard's health.

In any category you're going to have the extreme. Some players probably play 2 - 4 hours in a month. Some probably play 100. The average probably falls between 20 - 25. You don't need to know what the specifics are for each player, you just need a rough estimate of how many accounts are playing, and then extrapolate based on averages. Companies base their financial futures on estimates and averages, they don't use specific numbers. Going back to McDonald's, they don't base their sales estimates off of exactly how much each customer pays. They look at the yearly and go "Okay, we estimate we'll serve X number of customers at Y average sales per customer."

Originally Posted by Zdrasti

Of course it is, because price has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. They're still selling a product. Price differences between markets will always exist, but you're still selling the same product.

My point however, is that subscriptions in US/EU are vastly different from the "subscription" model in Asia. Ignore price, the product being sold here is nowhere near the same thing.

But Blizzard still estimates things the same. Whatever the amount they're getting from NetEase, they average it out from there.

And again, you're putting too much meaning on the word "subscriptions." Subs just give an estimate of the overall health of the company and are possible indicators of past and future performance. If you were an investor, you wouldn't look at subscription numbers, you would look at income and expenses.

Originally Posted by Zdrasti

WoW is amazingly popular in Asia and that's a great accomplishment. However, it is not the point. The point is that Chinese "subs" are vastly different from other "subs" to the point that they really shouldn't be called subs at all.

Let me give you an analogy. Carnivals usually have two means by which you can go on the rides. You can buy tickets and each ride costs a certain number of tickets. Alternately you can buy a wrist band, hand stamp, etc that lets you ride all day. The latter is like the WoW subscription model for US/EU whereas the former is like the Chinese model. Blizzard however lumps them together and what is more, they call them both subscriptions. This would be like the carnival lumping wrist bands and ticket sales together and calling them all wrist band sales.

There's two things to complain about here. First you shouldn't lump apples and oranges together. Second, if you choose to lump them together, you shouldn't call the combined objects apples.

You obviously have no idea about how Accounting works. The only thing an Accountant is going to look at is "ticket sales." How does it usually work when you go to the ticket stand at a Carnival? You pay the person 20 bucks and get 10 tickets, or you pay them 40 and get a wristband. The money you are giving them goes to the same place, is recorded the same way, and is reported back to the Accountant the same way. The only thing an accountant is going to see is "ticket sales" from that money. It would cost too much and require too dedicated of an infrastructure to track and differentiate between ticket and wristband sales.

Any company works this way. You have your departments. Each department sells something different. All of the sales from that department are lumped together. Hell, Blizzard's financial balance sheet doesn't even differentiate between whether it's World of Warcraft or Diablo game sales. It just says "Game Sales." Now of course we can extrapolate how much they make from subscriptions by looking at the "Subscription Sales" number, but you get my point, right?

don't bother... MMOTotal hates everyone has something negative to say about wow... even if the guy had valid points

Can you blame him? There's a lot of hate going on against WoW fanboys, which I never understood. You're on a primarily World of Warcraft dedicated website. Why do you get surprised when people defend their favorite game, on a website that is devoted to it?

Next time you go to a baseball game, go ahead and cheer for the visiting team the loudest that you can, and insult everyone you meet wearing the home team's jersey, and see what happens to you. If it makes sense that people can be fans and cheer for their favorite team that the home stadium, I never understood why people aren't allowed to cheer for Blizzard on a primarily Blizzard based website. Sure that home team might suck, and sure Blizzard might suck (according to your opinion). But you're not going to find any friends going into that team's home stadium and insulting them.

this is a forum. a discussion forum. for discussions. if discussions upset you that much, i suggest you leave.

people are genuinely interested in what that 10 million actually means. and what it means in relation to the 2.7 million first week sales. the correlation between the two does raise a question or two in my mind. it isnt trying to "bitterly disprove they have 10 million customers" to raise those questions. more a case of trying to understand how that 10 million breaks down.

I seriously doubt you're a statistical analyst, and if so, I would never hire you. If myself, a simple layman, can tell where the difference falls in those numbers, hopefully someone who is trained to analyze statistics could figure it out.

Blizzard currently has 10 million active accounts. They've never differentiated between China and the West. Blizz sells 2.7 million copies of MoP in the first week, and announces that was before MoP was released in the East. Therefore, you can assume several things. Either A) A substantial portion of Blizz's subs are Eastern-based, B) Some players may not have picked up the game yet (I know a couple friends who hadn't bought it in the first week) C) some combination of the two. More to the point, nobody who plays WoW or enjoys it should care what the numbers mean. People who don't play WoW shouldn't care, unless they own stock in Blizzard, in which case, that discussion is WAY over this forum's head anyway. Either way, you shouldn't care what Blizzard's numbers mean.

I personally enjoy playing WoW with my friends, and saw the numbers as probably just some PR spin (which all companies do, don't fool yourself). I don't care what they mean. It makes no difference to me.

Also, don't try to pass off any hate against WoW as "We're just trying to understand what the numbers mean." Yes there are some legitimate people who want to know what the numbers mean. But LOOK at the posts on these forums. 49% are people mindlessly defending WoW and making excuses, and 49% are people insulting WoW and declaring that it's dying. The other 2% are going to be lost in the shuffle. If you honestly care about the numbers for whatever reason, good for you; but you shouldn't be surprised when people think you're insulting or defending WoW.

The point is that the 10 million number is somewhat irrelevant when you want to talk about the healtiness of the company and the game, and I believe that most people are trying to use the numbers for that when they're arguing which game has the most subscribers.

If you want to know how many people are playing the game ... then 10 million WOULD have been the right number if it wasn't for the fact that it's also counting alt accounts of people, the fact that 100.000 accounts get banned each month (for botting) etc. It's hard to make an estimate on how many people are actually playing I'm going to guess this is roughly in the 7 to 8 million area, worldwide.

If you want to discuss the healthiness and competitiveness of the game on the market though then the asian subscriber numbers are completely irrelevant (besides 5% of Blizzard's WoW revenue).
Then the 3-4 million number makes more sense to take into account. Which means that if another mmo can sport 2 million subscribers that it should be considered heavy competition for Blizzard already. (The 10 million number just skews this perspective).

this is a forum. a discussion forum. for discussions. if discussions upset you that much, i suggest you leave.

people are genuinely interested in what that 10 million actually means. and what it means in relation to the 2.7 million first week sales. the correlation between the two does raise a question or two in my mind. it isnt trying to "bitterly disprove they have 10 million customers" to raise those questions. more a case of trying to understand how that 10 million breaks down.

I would agree. I'm more interested in knowing what the real break down of subscriptions are, I know for sure the China ones are cooked and the S. Korean ones ?? because they don't buy CD keys so I guess if someone buys a 30 hr game card that is counted as a subscription, and if he buys another one before his time is up it is counted as two subscriptions?? /shrug I think right now its safe to assume the real number for NA/EU is around 3mil or so.

You obviously have no idea about how Accounting works........ Now of course we can extrapolate how much they make from subscriptions by looking at the "Subscription Sales" number, but you get my point, right?

And you obviously have no idea how to hold a civilized discussion. You don't insult people because you have a difference of opinion.

As far as accounting goes, I understand that a carnival will not distinguish between the two, they will just look at revenue because it's too costly to distinguish the two. However there is no such cost for Blizzard as this is all electronic and the markets are geographically distinct. And while any company will ultimately combine the results of each department, product, sale, etc into a revenue figure, it would be naive to ignore the performance of individual products/departments, especially when you intrinsically already have that data.

As for your point here, yes we have to extrapolate from the limited information Blizzard does publish. One of the most glaring critiques of that published data is that they combine these apples and oranges and call them both subscriptions (ergo the discussion we are having). You call them players at one point. Regardless of the most appropriate nomenclature, I think we can all agree that subscriptions is really a bad term to use for all the reasons I've already given.

so much for that article here on the forums for a week saying MoP sales were terrible. That's why you always go to the source - they left out digital sales and used their own estimates and came up ~2 million short. This puts the sales around Wrath numbers I think which is pretty good. Sales will likely not diminish severely either given that you don't need the xpac unless you want to make yourself a panda monk or are an 85.

so much for that article here on the forums for a week saying MoP sales were terrible. That's why you always go to the source - they left out digital sales and used their own estimates and came up ~2 million short. This puts the sales around Wrath numbers I think which is pretty good. Sales will likely not diminish severely either given that you don't need the xpac unless you want to make yourself a panda monk or are an 85.

The article here actually provided great information. Using an MMO champ poll we were able to use those numbers to estimate MoP sales and we were pretty darned close to the true numbers. The point being that while these numbers are great, they are pretty bad for WoW.

The point is that the 10 million number is somewhat irrelevant when you want to talk about the healtiness of the company and the game, and I believe that most people are trying to use the numbers for that when they're arguing which game has the most subscribers.

If you want to know how many people are playing the game ... then 10 million WOULD have been the right number if it wasn't for the fact that it's also counting alt accounts of people, the fact that 100.000 accounts get banned each month (for botting) etc. It's hard to make an estimate on how many people are actually playing I'm going to guess this is roughly in the 7 to 8 million area, worldwide.

If you want to discuss the healthiness and competitiveness of the game on the market though then the asian subscriber numbers are completely irrelevant (besides 5% of Blizzard's WoW revenue).
Then the 3-4 million number makes more sense to take into account. Which means that if another mmo can sport 2 million subscribers that it should be considered heavy competition for Blizzard already. (The 10 million number just skews this perspective).

The flaw in this argument is that these companies, beyond having a vague idea of how much money Blizzard is making and how many subscriptions they have, really don't care about each other. They are competing with each other, sure, but it's not like companies have people sitting in an office all day trying to decipher Blizzard's customer numbers.

Do you think McDonald's really cares how many burgers exactly that Burger King is selling? Or do you think they would focus in more on how much Burger King is earning, and maybe take a look at some of their advertising strategies, etc? A company is only focused on their own health and well-being. Part of this is getting an accurate pulse of the competition, but they don't sit there and headcount all the customers buying at the competition.

Another way to look at it is this way. Let's compare McDonald's and Chic-Fil-A (note all numbers are examples)

Let's say McD's makes 6 billion a year.

Chic-Fil-A makes 600 million.

Do you think Chic-Fil-A cares that they make less than McD's and sell less food, or do you think they only care that they are making enough money to support their own company and to grow? It's the same between, say WoW and ArenaNet. I doubt the two are really interested in each other's success beyond noting what mechanics and features the other is using and trying to implement what they think might be successful.

And you obviously have no idea how to hold a civilized discussion. You don't insult people because you have a difference of opinion.

As far as accounting goes, I understand that a carnival will not distinguish between the two, they will just look at revenue because it's too costly to distinguish the two. However there is no such cost for Blizzard as this is all electronic and the markets are geographically distinct. And while any company will ultimately combine the results of each department, product, sale, etc into a revenue figure, it would be naive to ignore the performance of individual products/departments, especially when you intrinsically already have that data.

As for your point here, yes we have to extrapolate from the limited information Blizzard does publish. One of the most glaring critiques of that published data is that they combine these apples and oranges and call them both subscriptions (ergo the discussion we are having). You call them players at one point. Regardless of the most appropriate nomenclature, I think we can all agree that subscriptions is really a bad term to use for all the reasons I've already given.

I didn't insult you. I was pointing out that you were arguing in a field which you clearly had limited or no knowledge in. Besides I was attacking your use of an analogy to prove your point. That analogy was based on false facts and a misrepresentation of how businesses work. Am I supposed to just let you get away with posting wrong facts, or should I tell you that your facts are wrong?

You assume that Blizzard has some switch they can flick and automatically it will sort every player that qualifies under a certain criteria. You also assume that Blizzard has a liability to report the full extent of their criteria. As far as Blizzard is concerned, a subscription is well defined on their page. That's all they care about. They don't care how long you play. They don't care what you're doing in game. They don't even care if you bought an Annual Pass and haven't played since July. All they see is a little green check mark under "Active" for your account and count you. It's the same way census workers count the population of a city.

As for your last paragraph, sure calling them subscriptions might be a bad term. But it doesn't matter what they're called. As players it shouldn't matter what the number is. If I'm having a good time, I don't care how many other people are having a good time. And like I said, don't use the argument of "we deserve to know what the true facts are" because the only people who really deserve to know are investors, and they shouldn't be coming to these forums for financial information anyways.

WoW is amazingly popular in Asia and that's a great accomplishment. However, it is not the point. The point is that Chinese "subs" are vastly different from other "subs" to the point that they really shouldn't be called subs at all.

Let me give you an analogy. Carnivals usually have two means by which you can go on the rides. You can buy tickets and each ride costs a certain number of tickets. Alternately you can buy a wrist band, hand stamp, etc that lets you ride all day. The latter is like the WoW subscription model for US/EU whereas the former is like the Chinese model. Blizzard however lumps them together and what is more, they call them both subscriptions. This would be like the carnival lumping wrist bands and ticket sales together and calling them all wrist band sales.

There's two things to complain about here. First you shouldn't lump apples and oranges together. Second, if you choose to lump them together, you shouldn't call the combined objects apples.

They're users playing World of Warcraft at this present moment. As such, the 10 million number may not be very good from a financial point of view in estimating Blizzard's revenues but indicates very well how many people are playing this game as of September 2012

Would have been higher if they didn't just forget to add content for a year.

It did pretty well considering a major competitor just came out also.

Flawed logic, when it was...
1: Only 9 months, not a year.
2: ICC WAS a year (and Ruby Sanctum wasn't content, it was a story-bridge into Cata that was cleared MAYBE a half-dozen times and left to rot) and brought in more sales for Cata, than WotLK did.

Wait til we see the 30-day sales... once people have read reviews, or listened to friends/guildies and upgraded. Wouldn't shock me if it exceeded the first month sales of other expansion releases.

Games are not necessarily "easier" today. You are just a better player.
It takes more now to impress many gamers than it did 2-5 years ago, because so much has already been seen and done.
Many players expect to be wow'd with every release of a beloved franchise.
These are generally NOT the fault of the developers, but the fault of many players over-hyping and/or setting expectations too high.

Flawed logic, when it was...
1: Only 9 months, not a year.
2: ICC WAS a year (and Ruby Sanctum wasn't content, it was a story-bridge into Cata that was cleared MAYBE a half-dozen times and left to rot) and brought in more sales for Cata, than WotLK did.

Wait til we see the 30-day sales... once people have read reviews, or listened to friends/guildies and upgraded. Wouldn't shock me if it exceeded the first month sales of other expansion releases.

Yeah but it's also the quality of the content. ICC had 12 bosses, 3 heroic dungeons (that were actually fun and challenging for awhile), and then you got the little bonus boss in Ruby Sanctum. Dragon Soul was 8 ridiculously easy bosses, and 3 laughable heroic dungeons that were cleared in 20 minutes each. Everyone I know has cleared at least Normal Dragon Soul (and at least 8,000 guilds cleared it on heroic, according to wowprogress last I checked). Some people never killed Lich King (me included) because while you could PUG some of ICC at 30% normal, it still required at least SOME coordination.

Not saying you are wrong or the other person is wrong. Just pointing out that Dragon Soul may have only been 9 months but...those were some LONG 9 months.

Wait til we see the 30-day sales... once people have read reviews, or listened to friends/guildies and upgraded. Wouldn't shock me if it exceeded the first month sales of other expansion releases.

Its not going to exceed the first month sales of Cata unless they start selling copies in china for 2cents a box. Cata added 1.3 mil to its day one purchases after the first month, each expansions first month sales had been increase by 100k an expansion. If players continued their buying trend then first month mop sales would have added 1.4 mil. Sadly mop sold 2.7 in its first week, it may still get 1.4 mil but thats still worse than what cata did.

Unless the slew of New/Returning/Resubbing after AP is over players outweigh the people who won't be resubbing when AP drops.

Not only this, but people who are currently playing and enjoying WoW on the AP will still be subscribing, I'm sure. Most people who didn't want to play anymore cancelled the Annual Pass. It wasn't hard, you just lost all the benefits of having it.

Blizzard announced that some 1.2 million people bought the Annual Pass. They never announced how many cancelled, and I know there are probably a good amount from seeing posts and knowing friends who cancelled, etc.

World of Warcraftsubscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards.

So they dont say anything about ppl with multiple accounts or more than one active pre paid card. Or game room players with multiple accounts. Its still inflating.

and my point about the chinese isnt how much they are paying its how its counted. They pay per hour or w.e but they only have to access it once to becounted as a full sub. A sub in my book is a person who is paying for a full month, not a person who only wants to play for a few hours each month because thats all they can afford yet blizz makes it look like they have access the entire month when they dont.

Well, the definition is there for anyone to read and it's fair to assume that that's how they calculate their numbers. People may have an agenda to somehow press a different definition on people and for them I would suggest you start up your own business and define your financials any way you please within the limits of the law. It's clear enough to me that they report subscribers not players which takes care of the 'problem' of people with multiple accounts. As a bonus, gold farmers are counted too. Hurray!

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Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of everything is crap. When posting try and be in the 10% once in a while. It makes it better for everyone.

Not saying you are wrong or the other person is wrong. Just pointing out that Dragon Soul may have only been 9 months but...those were some LONG 9 months.

What Wowalixi is trying to get at is that if most guilds cleared DS 3 months in they still had to wait 6 more months for new content. If most guilds cleared ICC 9 months in they only had to wait 3 months for more content. Not saying thats what happened but i know in the 25 man guild i was in ( and i was in 2) One never got to do heroics, and the other eventually got stuck on heroic LK, and that was while RS was still going. My guild cleared 10 DS the 2nd day it was out. Pretty sure LK was gated and you couldnt clear it that fast.

Originally Posted by Wowalixi

Not only this, but people who are currently playing and enjoying WoW on the AP will still be subscribing, I'm sure. Most people who didn't want to play anymore cancelled the Annual Pass. It wasn't hard, you just lost all the benefits of having it.

Originally Posted by Wowalixi

Blizzard announced that some 1.2 million people bought the Annual Pass. They never announced how many cancelled, and I know there are probably a good amount from seeing posts and knowing friends who cancelled, etc.

Im a AP holder who didnt get MoP. Cancelling my sub in a few weeks so i can still play D3

I didn't insult you. I was pointing out that you were arguing in a field which you clearly had limited or no knowledge in. Besides I was attacking your use of an analogy to prove your point. That analogy was based on false facts and a misrepresentation of how businesses work. Am I supposed to just let you get away with posting wrong facts, or should I tell you that your facts are wrong?

You assume that Blizzard has some switch they can flick and automatically it will sort every player that qualifies under a certain criteria. You also assume that Blizzard has a liability to report the full extent of their criteria. As far as Blizzard is concerned, a subscription is well defined on their page. That's all they care about. They don't care how long you play. They don't care what you're doing in game. They don't even care if you bought an Annual Pass and haven't played since July. All they see is a little green check mark under "Active" for your account and count you. It's the same way census workers count the population of a city.

As for your last paragraph, sure calling them subscriptions might be a bad term. But it doesn't matter what they're called. As players it shouldn't matter what the number is. If I'm having a good time, I don't care how many other people are having a good time. And like I said, don't use the argument of "we deserve to know what the true facts are" because the only people who really deserve to know are investors, and they shouldn't be coming to these forums for financial information anyways.

You make a lot of assumptions and claim I'm saying a whole lot more than I actually am. My point is very narrow and very specific. Subscriptions in US/EU and Asia are dramatically different products. My carnival analogy spoke simply to that to allow people to disconnect emotionally from WoW.

As far as how Blizzard runs shop with the data it has and what it chooses to publish that's its call, its a grown company and can make its own decisions. We however can criticize what it does. It chooses to lump them together and call them all subscriptions -- ok that's fine. I and others claim that its a bad term and I give my reasons.

As for your other points. An analogy is merely an analogy and is used to help gain understanding about a particular concept (the two different products in this case) -- nothing about facts or false facts here. No, I don't care about Blizzard making everyone qualify under a certain criterion. They like many companies sell different things -- their published data is lacking detail. As for the little green checkmark and whatever else you think they see, I claim you may actually be the one with "limited or no knowledge" about such things. Companies collect and use tremendous amounts of data for analytics. It's Blizzard's call how they run shop, but I am certain their investors would be horrified if they simply ignored their ability to use this data. As for the we deserve to know argument, well people are using the information that is published to the investors. These forums are merely a place where we discuss things, but the information we are discussing comes from the same data investors get. Bottom line, you bring up a whole bunch of things that are irrelevant to the point I'm making. Ultimately it even seems like you agree with me.